The Panorama team investigating the Jimmy Savile scandal and the BBC's handling of a Newsnight investigation into sexual abuse by the late presenter wants to air the programme on Monday night – a day before the corporation's director general gives evidence to Parliament.

However, it is uncertain at this point if they can complete editing a film in time for Monday – and BBC insiders said that a final decision will not be taken until the weekend. But the possibility of the film is already creating dilemmas for the corporation which is having to create "chinese walls" between those with knowledge of its contents and those not.

Ironically, the Panorama investigation will draw on the Newsnight probe, controversially dropped by the programme's editor Peter Rippon in December of last year. Meiron Jones, the producer of the Newsnight film, has gone over to Panorama, and will be able to draw on his own knowledge of the Savile affair and the fate of the Newsnight report.

The Panorama team is likely to be trying to establish what senior executives knew about the decision to cancel the Newsnight film, placing the programme in the difficult position not just of trying to establish what the BBC's current director general, George Entwistle, knew – but also the head of BBC news, Helen Boaden.